Sunday, January 13, 2013

Spur-of-the-Moment Lunch at Nixtamal

I love having the excuse, any chance I get, to visit Tortilleria Nixtamal, and it's been quite a while. Getting that itch for their delectable tacos and tamales, Dan and I decided to make a pit stop for lunch, after visiting friends, Grant and Katie in their new casa. Unfortunately, the drive over was quite hellish, but as always, it was so worth it, making us forget about all those pestering traffic escapades. Here's what we had:

Tamales:We can never come here without including a hefty tamale to our order. This time around, we tried two varieties including the chicken mole and the chicken with red salsa. Both were flavorful and delicious, and we loved putting both the red and green (really spicy) salsa sauce on top for added flavor. While I liked mine, I thought they could've gone heavier on the mole sauce, which seemed a little bit like an afterthought. The chicken tamale however had larger pieces of meat inside and was definitely more generously doused in red salsa sauce, which was just delicious. Dan gave me a bite of his and I secretly wished I ordered it. Next time!Tacos:Since we both got tamales, which were very filling, we thought that ordering two additional tacos would be enough. And it was. The Al Pastor, with rotisserie pork, sweet chunks of pineapple, chopped onions and cilantro were nomtastic, as my friend Meg would say. The pork had a nice smokey-sweet flavor, which totally hit the spot and felt like the perfect bite of slow cooked meat. Although it didn't need much else, we were totally obsessed with the red salsa sauce, which we put on top anyway.

Additionally to this, I also got the barbacoa taco, with seasoned lamb, prepared by being steamed in maguey (agave) leaves, which just like the Al Pastor, made it ultra tender. This was definitely a lot spicier in flavor, as it was topped with green jalapeno peppers, which gave it that extra kick. While it definitely gave your tastebuds a jolt, it wasn't too spicy and went perfectly with the deep, rich flavored meat. If you're a lamb lover, you're going to love this non-traditional, sophisticated taco.

Service and Cost:As always, the service was fantastic and the perfect amount of attentive. Since all dishes take just a short time to prepare, we were in and out of there in about a half an hour, but could've stayed as long as we wanted. They had the football and basketball games on, which is an added bonus for all you staunch sports fans.

Costs remain inexpensive and for the above mentioned lunch, including a beer and two lbs of tortillas to go, we paid about $33 with tax and tip.